Susie Bright was in New York a few weeks ago for the In the Flesh Reading Series, where she rounded up some of the local contributors to X: The Erotic Treasury, an anthology Bright produced for Chronicle Books. Our schedules never quite synced up, but Bright emailed us shortly after the event to tell us about the inspiration for X, a deluxe slipcased volume—starting with seeing erotic genre publishing explode in recent years “like a wagonful of Harold Robbins remainders,” with book after book sporting a Victoria’s Secret knockoff cover and printed on cheap paper. “Believe me, I include myself in this parade,” Bright said. “I was depressed by the lack of quality in the books, and it seemed to me, as books are undergoing this strange Internet transformation, the appearance of a book that in and of itself was something you wanted to hold and cherish, could symbolize the quality of the authors within. So I contacted some of my favorite authors that I’ve met over the past 25 years in Best American Erotica and Herotica, especially the ones who seem to be able to be geniuses and work fiends on a tight deadline. I’m also a huge blog and ‘zine reader; always looking for the next person who’s going to blow my mind.”
As more and more publishers, including some of the largest houses, enter into the erotic publishing market, it underscores the changes that have taken place in the field since Bright began editing her first anthologies. “Contemporary life and culture was introduced to frank erotic writing after a pretty long period of banality by the small gay and feminist presses of the late 1970s and ’80s,” she reflected. “NO one heard of them outside their milieu, but they knew they were continuing a kind of intellectual revolution that prospered particularly on the Left Coast and the beat era. At the same time, sexual politics were heating up, the Moral Majority making their first moves, and the big PUSH BACK by progressives included what were the nucleus of sex positive feminists and the new ‘queer’ sensibility. It’s hard to remember now that saying that word was risqué in the early 80s.”
When Bright launched the Best American Erotica series in the early 1990s, “it was such an exciting time in publihsing, because the Internet was just opening up and it looked like it was all going to be perfect for writers… We weren’t thinking about ‘intellectual property rights’ so much then. We were so overjoyed that we could produce new work so easily and cheaply!” In the years since, though, she’s become disheartened by what she perceives as a devaluation of literary craftsmanship. “People often greet me at events and talk about books that changed their lives,” she said. “sometimes mine, sometimes others’. I would like them to know it’s not a happy accident that happened. The author’s originality, their timing, their observation—it wasn’t just a dandelion fluff that got caught in your hair. Think about changing their lives by supporting them, so the very best authors can continue, and make a difference. We don’t flame out quickly, despite the Hollywood movies to that effect. We tend to get even more lucid as the pen keeps flowing.”
(photos: Stacie Joy)